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100Provocative, quietly erotic, deeply romantic, and slyly witty (a cameo by a giant of punk rock is funny at first sight, and funnier still when you figure out the joke it's making), Code 46 is a very effective antidote to summer blockbuster bloat.
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89Cyberpunk meets renegade romance, à la Orwell.
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83Code 46 has a noirish fatalism that renders it a close cousin to ''Blade Runner,'' but Winterbottom's film, shot mostly in the light, uses the theme of memory erasure to peer into the eternal sunshine of tragically altered minds.
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80Astonishing, haunting and lyrical on its own terms.
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75Not always compellingly made, but intelligent and perhaps prophetic.
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75Updates a classic premise -- the struggle for personal freedom -- by pairing it with ethical and moral quandaries.
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What is deeply stirring is Code 46's sound, light and texture. It's probably bad critical form to recommend a movie based largely on abstractions like "vibe," but Winterbottom does such a glorious job building his world that a certain breed of filmgoer can get punch-drunk lost in the pure cinema of it all.
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70If the movie is finally something of a failure as a romance, it's rarely less than a triumph of soulful imagination.
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At times somber, and now and then dangerously close to self-important, Code 46 is nonetheless a smart, mature film that examines who and what we can be to each other, in a world full of invention and change.
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70You may soon forget the specifics of the plot, but you'll always remember the world it came from.
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63The problem with Code 46 is that the movie, filled with ideas and imagination, is murky in its rules and intentions. I cannot say I understand the hows and whys of this future world, nor do I much care, since it's mostly a clever backdrop to a love affair that would easily teleport to many other genres.
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63But for what is at heart a thriller, Code 46 lacks both energy and tension.
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63For at least half the movie, you need a code book a few inches thick to decipher Code 46.
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It all contributes to a vision of the future that is as haunting as it is dispiriting.
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Code 46 lacks the visceral power of "28 Days Later," as well as what might be termed its "gross-out" appeal.
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60Ultimately the sci-fi fillips — human cloning, memory wipes, empathy viruses — are subordinate to screenwriter Frank Cottrell Boyce's doomed romance.
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60Cinematography, production design and music are all top-notch, but the film largely succeeds because of the leads -- two fine actors at the top of their game.
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60Late in the day, Code 46 bursts its chemical chains to become a convincingly irrational love story.
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60An intriguing but only partly successful co-mingling of film noir and sci-fi.
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50What doesn't spark is the love story. Morton still seems soggy from her "Minority Report" role as a drenched pre-cog. Who wants romance in a future where glum is the word?
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Too ambiguous, too meandering to envelop us. It's ambitious work but ultimately cold, distant and difficult to piece together.
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50An intriguing, if seriously flawed, film noir.
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50What this dystopia doesn't do is shock. In truth, Code 46 traffics in notions of speculative social fiction that are so familiar by now as to feel disconcertingly normal.
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50I won't spoil the ending, but if Code 46 is to be believed, women will have it even worse in the years to come.
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50Their doomy romance is supposed to be fated, but it just seems sloggy, certainly not the stuff of myth. A good comedy could be made from this same premise.
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50Though Robbins acts a little stiff, Morton remains stunning throughout, playing a mixture of her wide-eyed, deeply sensitive characters from "Morvern Callar" and "Minority Report." She suggests worlds within worlds.
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50Winterbottom, who's never been a director with a gift for warmth, can't make this romance come alive. Morton and Robbins are gifted actors, but they seem straitjacketed here, and the film finds it difficult to avoid tedium as their lugubrious relationship unfolds.
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50The movie's atmosphere is, in many ways, more interesting than its story. Mr. Robbins and Ms. Morton are not the warmest actors. He can be mannered and smug, and she often seems to beam her performances from a strange, private mental universe.
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50It's about unruly passion, but it's icy and cerebral, and Robbins has become a disappointingly tentative actor, playing emotionally straitjacketed men in a self-imposed straitjacket.
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50This film sounds better than it plays; there are too many echoes of "Alphaville" and of the dreamy drift of "Blade Runner." But the style of the opening and closing credits is pretty spiffy.
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42This sci-fi film noir craves a passionate center, an intoxicating core or some pulse that makes us want to keep taking that first step into dark waters, but it leaves us drowning in its quiet tedium instead.
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38Code 46 is like "Solaris" without the psychological depth and strong acting. The movie is flat, boring, pointless, and nonsensical.
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30Michael Winterbottom's Code 46 commits a Code 1 violation: It's boring.
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 12 out of 18
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Mixed: 3 out of 18
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Negative: 3 out of 18
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RichardS.4
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